Ah, spring! Ah, chipmunk! (or just perhaps it was a mole.)That wisteria bush in the background was never before or never thereafter this pretty. You see that depression in which it sits? When I was very young, my grandfather planted a pecan tree there for my mother, and in pictures of my childhood you can see it grow. It finally fell over in a freak summer storm in the mid-1980s that came from the northeast and uprooting the pecan and pushing it over onto the northeast corner of the front porch. My mother's solution to the hole in the yard was to plant bulbs around it. Mine was to add a wisteria in the middle. In recent years, now that the wisteria is gone, I have pretty much filled in the depression to normal ground level. But those bulbs still try to come up!

These are the Pride of Mobile azaleas along the back fence. I've always liked the gradations of pink and the white. Look, she's barking again, and this time Tom looks like he's the one who would just as well not be posing. He looks to me like he's forcing that smile just a bit..

Tom and Huck in the shot above were in front of those azaleas along the back fence. That structure between Tom and the old oak at one time held up a back-yard swing. We discontinued that when the wood support got to old to safely support precious weights.I myself was able to get rid of that long limb sticking out from the oak, but I had to get professional help later on for taking the tree down.

On the path down to the goat pasture. That English dogwood they are standing by is still there: I'm not sure it is possible to kill it.

We're down to two goats now. The next one to go was the brown goat that replaced Mama-San as leader. The rigors of leadership yet again taking their toll, I guess.

Come on down here and join us, Tom! We're having such a great time!That fallen tree you see made a great bridge for the goats across a particularly swampy section of the bottom, and Huck could use it as well. As did I upon occasion. I still find it remarkable at how those goats kept the pasture so cleaned off. Any green sprout (except, of course, for buckeye) they'd nibble off as soon as it popped up out of the ground.This shot reminds me: a couple of years earlier, a woodchuck turned up on the west side of the pasture near the back fence, and Huck had a purple fit. It seemed not to be unduly concerned, but it managed to waddle at a steady pace across the bottom to what would be the far right side of the picture. I figured it was close enough to the fence so that it would make it though to safety, so I let Huck into the pasture. She went barreling across the bottom to Get That Thing! Mr. Woodchuck seemed unconcerned, and I began to worry. But just as Huck got into attack distance, the woodchuck suddenly stood straight up on its hind legs. This scared Huck so much that she turned on a dime and came barreling right back across the bottom to us and safety. The woodchuck continued calmly about its business, and Huckleberry decided she had had enough of woodchucks for one day.

She seemed to feel relatively good that spring, but that would change, particularly as we began to move into the hotter summer months.

The red tip here lasted longer than the ones across the front of the yard. I guess being farther back from the others, the blight didn't transmit to it quite as quickly.My blue awnings are getting grungy. Part of the problem is that the rains bring bits of that roofing material down on the awnings. Four or five years ago they were pressure-washed and looked pretty good for a while, but now they are looking like this again.This side gate would have been the main portal to the country store/post office when I was a child, and there was a brick walk that ran from the gate around to the right to where the back door was then. Those bricks have subsequently been taken up to permit greater ease in mowing.

That summer involved more and more trips to the veterinarian because of Huck's health issues. One problem we encountered those coming months was an ulcer on her right front leg that would not heal. The sore probably resulted from some simple wound that normally would have been no problem whatsoever. Infection set in. Antibiotics, of course, and a big challenge for me. The wound had to be kept open so that the surface would not heal over and leave infection imbedded, and twice daily I would have to open it up and flush it out by forcing water from a syringe up into the wound. I'm not good a playing doctor, but this was our Huckleberry and it had to be done so I did it.She was so good at allowing me to do this.

In fact, she was a wonderful patient. She knew that she was not feeling good, and somehow she figured out that we were trying to help her. She made the connection that trips to the vet were to make her feel better. She began to lose her appetite, and for a while she had difficulty keeping anything down other than a bit of rice flavored with finely minced chicken. Along the way we figured out that her liver was involved, but it was unclear whether liver problems were causing the infections or the infections causing the liver indications. Several different medications were tried, and she'd get better for a while and then the decline would begin again.She somehow understood that pills were good for her, and there are times when I had put a pill in food which she did not feel like eating, and she would search out the pill and take it. I am still amazed at that. I did not think dogs capable of such complex knowledge.

She seems to be going to the bathroom here. That would be unusual. Such things tended to take place along the outside fence or down in the woods.That fall she lost her thick undercoat, as usual, but that winter it did not grow back. She was so cold! We kept her inside where it was warm as much as possible. Finally, after she had been on a course of Prednisone, she began to feel better and the undercoat began to grow back, maybe thicker than ever. But then she seemed to be too hot all the time.But we made it through the winter. It would be her last.